Press Gallery:   

Long live the fraternity of our elite

Saeed Minhas

Islamabad: Budget has become more of a political battleground where Peoples Party and its new-found allies on treasury benches are trying to extract not collective but their respective individual mileage and Opposition–once tagged as friendly and awaiting their turn on musical chair–is trying to malign all of them with utter disrespect and with complete impunity.

Leader of opposition Ch. Nisar took his usual prolonged time on the microphone to ensure that he can lament the government and its allies—two of whom are in a hostile situation (MQM & Que League) with his party—for presenting what he described a ‘nothing budget’. He might have ignored the fact or maybe he again failed to give any chance to the parliamentary party to see him prior to his speech that PML (N) boycotted the whole process of budget scrutiny. The budgetary proposals were scrutinized by the national assembly’s standing committee for finance, revenue and Planning development prior to the presentation of the budget in the national assembly and no less than five members of Nawaz League are part of this committee which include Khawaja Asif and Jamil Malik. Instead, the Opposition leader preferred to stick to one of dozens of ultimatum-laden (remember ten points raised by Mian Nawaz Sharif in Jan 2011) agendas to push the government for bringing economic reforms in the country.

But isn’t it ironic to find out that what Mian sahib’s outlined economic reforms agenda is endorsed by not only his own allies but even by his critics including government and its allies. What no one including our opposition and ruling leaders is giving us is the modus operandi which can help translate their unanimous solutions into workable programmes. The solutions Mian sahib outlined, before vanishing into the foreign lands, are no different from what a layman on street has been looking for almost 60 odd years but neither Mian sahib nor any other party or military dictator ever managed to turn their words into deeds despite getting simple and even two-third (engineered or not is besides the point here) mandates from the voters.

Fourth finance minister of this government is spending all his energies to make the nation believe that it’s neither a status quo budget nor a dynamic one but the best he could manage under the current circumstances. Besides rampant corruption, total collapse of governance, a continued game of survival for the government and an unending menace of terrorism, perhaps hafiz Shaikh seems right because none of these issues can be solved by a daily-wager finance minister—who is more interested in sorting out the over draft issues with banks (more on this in detail in our next column) than ensuring that whatever budget draft he has thrown at the parliament is understood first and then implemented or not.

Here Ch. Nisar was right when he said that not many amongst those who were thumping desks when the budget was being read by Hafiz Shaikh on last Friday could even understand what he was saying yet due to party lines either they were supportive of it or were raising all sorts of ugly slogans.

It’s these kinds of shows which have rendered the credibility of the politicians and the successive government so vulnerable that a look at last year’s world opinion about our governance is enough to put the entire nation to shame.

According to the latest figures circulated by our babus at Economic Affairs division, such is our credibility amongst the comity of nations that instead of translating their pledges into deliverable funds, they too have started holding back their agreed grants and loans, to the government and whatever they could spare for us they have started to spend it through their especially flown in consultants and NGOs. No different is the case with the much debated KLB bill under which we were supposed to get US $ 1.5 billion every year but even majority of that amount is now being funneled through USAID for obvious reasons. 

Out of a total US $ 902 million promised by various world donors for our non-project aid, including the promised US $ 600 million of the infamous Kerry Lugar Bill, we ended the year around US $ 250 million. Whereas for project specific aid pledges, various donors (including Tokyo pledges) against the promised amount of US $ 241 million we could get only 105 million dollars.

If that is not enough than please have a look at the undertakings of the world donors for extending various kinds of loans to our country because here the situation is even more dismal. Against US $ 2500 million we ended up getting only US $ 500 million for non-projects and it included various desktop needs of our bureaucracy or their henchmen like capacity building, office equipment and even cars and furniture. The situation of loans on developmental sides however remained a bit better not because of any renewed trust in our government but because of the natural disasters because it reads that out of expected US $ 780 million we managed to get US $ 714 million. But remember we have to pay back these loans (through our noses) no matter how soft term or high interest they were and the better side of receiving was on the loans side not the grants side.

If this is not a situation to ponder than we certainly are looking at the barrels while sitting right in front of it waiting for a miracle to defuse the detonator. But mind you this barrel situation is only for the commoners not for the elite, because most of them prefer to take a hike when both political and economic temperatures rise here. Unless, Hafiz Shaikh is pressurized into introducing a general amnesty for our elite to wash their dirty money without any accountability, Chaudhrys will continue to stick to their European destinations, and so will many of Nawaz leaguers, Peoples Party, Asfand National Party and even Maulanas (be it sandwich or diesel) because they respect this Pak land so much that they do not want to bring their dirty linen here without an assurance that enough water will be ensured to wash it and then re-route it to foreign pastures again. Just like we have seen that in NICL investigations or Punjab bank scam where Chaudhrys were sort of caught on the tape doing all the naughty things with the public money but since political situation helped them take a shelter from ‘very well-remunerated’ supreme judiciary, there seems hardly any chance that they would feel any heat before 2013. So long live our elite for showing such a great fraternity for their own causes and continue to wait for a messiah to get the answers to real questions.